Mourning Losses at Morningside

In territorial days, Alaskans could be one of three places…Inside (in Alaska), Outside (anywhere else), or Morningside (Morningside Hospital).

Fairbanks residents Karen Perdue and Ellen Ganley are two of the bravest women in Alaska. They have volunteered for one of life’s most difficult tasks: blindsiding people with the tragic circumstances of their long-lost loved ones.

The women didn’t wake up one morning and decide to answer this call. They had been working on the Alaska Mental Health Trust History Jukebox, a project offering remarkable insight into the long struggle to provide quality mental health services in Alaska from the perspective of the people who participated.

A three-day trip to the National Archives resulted in the discovery of 42 boxes of Morningside Hospital records. Perdue and Ganley brought what they could back to Alaska, uncovering a story that reads like a Hollywood script as it brings to light the tales of the unfortunate patients there.

Prior to Statehood, mentally ill or retarded people would be declared “an insane person at Large” in a court hearing before a jury of six laymen who would be impaneled to “to inquire, try and determine whether the person so complained of is really insane.”

Contrary to the American concept of justice, these court trials for insanity laid the burden of proof upon the accused person. A friendless soul in the throws of a hangover might prove so unresponsive to questioning, so ignorant of the importance of the hearing, or simply so inept with the English language, that the lay jury might in good conscience adjudge him “insane as charged.”

Edward Cannon fought for an Alaskan institution, suggesting it “will stop a lot of railroading [of patients] on frame-ups by crooked territorial appointees who wanted to settle their revenges in this way.” No transcripts of Alaskan commitment hearings were made.

Alaskans deemed mentally ill were subjected to a over a week in a straight jacket while traveling via steamship and rail, as they made their way to Morningside Hospital in Portland, Oregon, a private facility owned by Wayne and Henry Coe and financed by the Federal Government. Perdue and Ganley estimate the total number of patients at Morningside may range between 3,500-4,500.

Most patients arrived without any type of clinical history or diagnostic records, without ever having been examined by a physician, much less a psychiatrist. According to Bob Bartlett, “numbers of patients who were committed to Morningside died a few hours after admission because they had not received proper medical care while in detention, while waiting for transportation, or while en route to Oregon.”

In their blog, Ganley writes, “It was never clear to me when Morningside started admitting children. The patient lists during the early years seemed to be populated by miners, gamblers and others who came North to seek their fortunes. By the time Alaska assumed responsibility for providing mental health services to its citizens in 1956, a significant percentage of patients at Morningside were children with developmental disabilities. Some admitted soon after birth.”

A survey of Morningside admissions conducted in 1941 by Doris Freeburger found the average patient was a single male in his 30-40s. At that time, 58.4 % of the population was not diagnosed. Dementia, panic depressive, epileptic, senile, mental defective, general nerosis, paranoid, trama, drug addiction, and a high rate of alcoholic psychoses rounded out the population’s reported aliments. About half of those deemed as “mentally defective” were Alaska natives who spoke poor English.

Over the years, multiple inspections of Morningside painted a grim picture of life in the facility. Admissions procedures were characterized as “comparable to the apprehension and commitment of a criminal” with the words “archaic, cruel, inhumane and essentially barbaric” underlined in the report.



One report noted, “The greatest shortcoming lies in the fact that practically no psychiatric treatment is afforded the many patients who urgently need such treatment. The professional staff is inadequate numerically and professionally to provide the required treatment.” One clinical psychiatrist, with a minimum of training, was available for the psychiatric care of 344 patients at the time.

Under the open hospital model, Morningside patients were controlled through sedatives rather than lock and key. New patients received a regular psychiatric interview, after which electric shock and/or insulin shock was often prescribed.

A “violent and hazardous” treatment, insulin-coma therapy was found to be used “dangerously” at the “grossly understaffed” hospital “without sufficient professional personnel.” Some of the patients selected for insulin shock therapy were poor risks as they were over 65 years old, or suffering from serious physical ailments.


It involves injection of insulin for the purpose of inducing a temporary coma, which is terminated after some 15 – 30 minutes by administering glucose, sometimes intravenously but usually by means of a tube inserted into the stomach either through the nose or mouth while the patient is in a coma. Because of the danger of introducing the tube into the lungs and drowning the patient with the glucose, a gavage should be done only by medically trained doctors and registered nurses.

But when the insulin shock therapy treatment was inaugurated by Dr. Thompson at Morningside Hospital, there was only one registered nurse at Morningside. Her duty hours were from 6 am to 2:30 pm, and after she left the attendants would terminate the secondary insulin coma, which often developed several hours after the initial treatment. Many gavages were performed without records being made of the procedures.

A Congressional committee found that a number of patients died either as a direct result of the insulin therapy treatment or within 24 hours after undergoing the shock, with substantial evidence indicating that some of the deaths may have occurred from drowning of patients while being gavaged by attendants without benefit of proper oversight.




In a number of case,s the committee found “shocking instances of neglect of patients”. It was a common practice for elderly patients who lacked control of their eliminative functions to be “strapped to stools in the lavatory” for many hours. In one instance, in 1950, a patient who was “usually” kept strapped to the pot chair “all day”, was found dead of exhaustion.

In 1953, a patient who vomited during an epileptic fit was placed into a bathtub and doused with buckets of water instead of being cleaned with a sponge or cloth. The patient, whose head was under water at times during the epileptic seizure, died a few minutes later.

“The evidence before the committee indicated that when medical examiner Dr. Keller was first assigned to Morningside Hospital in April 1947, he found conditions at Morningside deplorable, with inadequate staff, and improper care and treatment verging upon outright abuse.” Suggested one government report.

Those who died were “buried without regard for common standards of decency” including interment of more than one individual in a single grave. Government reports noted graves of Morningside patients were near a ravine, overgrown by tall grass, and unmarked. Outer caskets were not used. It was determined that because of confusion in records as well as absence of markers, it would “be difficult or impossible to locate and identify some of the bodies if a relative should wish to disinter a deceased patient.”

Karen Perdue and Ellen Ganley are spending their free time sifting through dusty boxes, compiling information, and posting it up on MorningsideHospital.com. The Wall of Names of Morningside Patients sees constant additions.

At the National Archives are nearly all of the Morningside patient lists from 1904-1950s, contracts, investigation reports, personnel records, medical officer reports, and administrative correspondence. There are also telegrams, vouchers, and letters. Some of the letters concern the custody and care of mental patients, and discharge of cured individuals.
Perdue and Gangley have set up a website, MorningsideHospital.com, to disseminate information on committed Alaskans. Efforts to assemble a database of patient names and information has begun, but is missing the estimated $15,000 needed to complete the task.

For now they are working their way through the paperwork they brought home, posting information on their website, and helping the friends and families of Morningside patients find answers to questions that have lingered for decades.